Lord of the Sabbath

...who desires mercy and not sacrifice.

What a great passage for us today. But it also presents a bit of a conundrum.

The Pharisees are not wrong. Exodus 34:21 says exactly that there shouldn’t be any harvesting on the sabbath. If we want to use the Bible in fundamental, letter-of-the-law ways, we would agree with the Pharisees.

But Jesus’ law is wider.

His defiance of the religious leaders is on full display in the healing of the man with a withered hand. Just picture the scene of him actually miraculously healing the man’s hand with the Pharisees looking on and actually sulking about it.

Matthew 12:1-14

At that time Jesus went through the wheat fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry so they were picking heads of wheat and eating them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are breaking the Sabbath law.”

But he said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and those with him were hungry? He went into God’s house and broke the law by eating the bread of the presence, which only the priests were allowed to eat. Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple treat the Sabbath as any other day and are still innocent? But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what this means, I want mercy and not sacrifice, you wouldn’t have condemned the innocent. The Human One is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Jesus left that place and went into their synagogue. A man with a withered hand was there. Wanting to bring charges against Jesus, they asked, “Does the Law allow a person to heal on the Sabbath?”

Jesus replied, “Who among you has a sheep that falls into a pit on the Sabbath and will not take hold of it and pull it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! So the Law allows a person to do what is good on the Sabbath.” Then Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he did and it was made healthy, just like the other one. The Pharisees went out and met in order to find a way to destroy Jesus.

Prayer

God,

Break the boundaries in my life. Break the boundaries not simply because I like breaking something, but break the boundaries so that your love can be set free through my life. Of course, I do pray that you would keep me from that which would bring me down. But break the boundaries, fences, and structures I cling to for nothing more than my own self.

By your Spirit & in Christ,

Amen.